Offender and Victim Criminal Lifestyles

Abstract:

Study findings show that criminal lifestyles are common among both homicide victims and offenders. At least 75 percent of the victims and 87 percent of the offenders engaged in some type of criminal/deviant lifestyle. The analyses did not find much variation among the lifestyles of homicide victims and offenders in Newark; however, there were two types of homicide victims and offenders. One group of victims and offenders were apparently less involved in the criminal world, and the other group was heavily involved in the criminal world. Still, this small variation between homicide victims and offenders did influence homicide type; for example, the combination of the most criminally involved victims and offenders was more likely to lead to gang-related and drug-related homicides, and the more criminally involved youth were more likely to kill the less criminally involved victims in escalating dispute/revenge-related homicide incidents. In addition,...